


Between You and I (Battle of Tears and Love)

by AndromedaofOthys



Series: Dies Irae/Kajiri Kamui Kagura fics [1]
Category: Dies Irae (Visual Novel)
Genre: Beatrice von Kircheisen Character Study, Beatrice von Kircheisen Loves Eleonore von Wittenburg, Canon Compliant, Cursed Love motif, Eleonore von Wittenburg Cares About Beatrice von Kircheisen, Inspired by Music, Multi, One-sided Beatrice von Kircheisen/Eleonore von Wittenburg, Sad Eleonore von Wittenburg, The story of two women destined to love those they cannot ever have, Unrequited Love, Verfaulen Segen (Dies Irae) Compliant, Young Beatrice von Kircheisen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 07:14:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27120091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndromedaofOthys/pseuds/AndromedaofOthys
Summary: Beatrice reflects on the three moments in her life that defined her as she fades into the gestalt of Tubal Cain - the first time she beat a boy into dust for having the nerve to ask her to be his trophy wife, the first time she met the woman who she'd hopelessly love for the rest of her life, and the first time she realized how jealous she could be.Eleonore gets the news of her subordinate's death eleven years too late, and reacts.
Relationships: Beatrice von Kircheisen & Alfred der Vogelweide, Beatrice von Kircheisen & Eleonore von Wittenburg, Beatrice von Kircheisen/Eleonore von Wittenburg, Beatrice von Kircheisen/Sakurai Kai
Series: Dies Irae/Kajiri Kamui Kagura fics [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1923934
Kudos: 3





	Between You and I (Battle of Tears and Love)

**Author's Note:**

> I had to make this. Listen, I had to. After spending so much of the last chapter of Blood Lotus inside Wilhelm's head (who kept obsessing over Beatrice, the creepy fucker), I just had to purge with this... though I'm not sure this semi-angsty fic was the right thing to do, but oh well. Anything that'd feed my desire for more Beatrice/Eleonore content, whether platonic or romantic.

_Beatrice, age 72 (19), 1995_

The life of Beatrice von Kircheisen could be summarized in two words: cursed love.

It was not a sentiment borne out of some grand delusion, or in the throes of maturing when the world suddenly lost the golden sheen of innocence and ignorance and everything seemed only black and white. No, this sentiment came to her only when she was on the verge of dying, Sakurai Kai’s body, already more corpse-like than any other Tubal Cain, cradled in her arms.

Her whole life had been one grand joke, marked by one thing only – cursed love. It manifested in many ways: first she ran away from all declarations of love from men, determined to be a knight worthy of her family’s name, then she chased after the love of a woman who only had eyes for duty and another man, and then she hopelessly fell in love with a man whose days were numbered by the very thing that helped her outlive everyone she ever knew apart from the fellow Knights of the Obsidian Table.

“ _Scheisse_ ,” Beatrice murmured as she felt her blood and life drain away from her body. Kai’s defeat had not been swift, or flawless – her injuries were severe enough to impede her chances of regeneration, and even if she did manage to recover enough for it to even matter, there was still an issue of Kei, Bey, Malleus and Spinne knowing about her plans.

She could not afford herself to live past this point in time, she couldn’t – not after she had so openly spoken about ruining the Transmutation of Gold, not after she had knowingly and willingly betrayed the Obsidian Table… then again, she had been set up, hadn’t she? Blasted Kristoff – he and his stupid desires, playing around with human lives just like Lord Heydrich and Vice Commander used to – he was the true monster here. He’d paired her up with Kai and Kei, pushed all her buttons so she’d rush her plans, and now it would not be her paying the ultimate price.

However… maybe, if she timed it just right… She would not let Kei suffer the consequences of her own folly and many, many mistakes she had made along the way. NO, if she could save just one person, just one innocent child from the fate of becoming part of the cursed gestalt that was Tubal Cain, she'd be more than alright with it.

_Forgive me, Kai, Kei._

“Major, I hope you’ll forgive my unsightly appearance when we meet again,” Beatrice sighed, letting her cheek fall onto Kai’s already deathly cold shoulder, the rain and blood pouring down her body and messing up the hairdo she had so painstakingly made just for today for the school and for Kai. She took a deep breath and blindly reached first for her own blade _Thrud Walkure,_ still humming with electricity, and then for the much heavier blade of Wewelsburg Longinus, the blade made in the mirror image of original Longinus and cursed for its existence to devour its creator's family. “Then again, maybe you’ll finally notice me as I always wanted you to? We’ll match with how unsightly we are to the normal people… maybe then you’ll finally accept me as your equal.”

She smiled bitterly, and let herself fall into the gestalt that was Tubal Cain, the memories resurfacing as she lost herself to the darkness…

* * *

_Beatrice, age 9, 1932_

“No, absolutely not!”

A loud, high-pitched female yell echoed through the Kircheisen manor’s training grounds, but it only drew the most cursory of the attention from its inhabitants. This was an all-too familiar scene to all of them, and secretly most of them pitied the person who found themselves on the other end of this yell.

The yell belonged to the tiny mistress of the house, the proud eldest child of the long and distinguished Kircheisen bloodline, and she looked the right terror as she crossed her arms, a practice sword dangling from her right hand, hair sloppily tied into a single Dutch braid, and glared volleys of lightning at her newest victim.

The boy, Alphonse, wilted under her sky-colored eyes raining heavenly fire, but to his credit persisted. He was only sixteen years old, but he did have a good family name and pedigree attached to his legacy, and he had not come all the way here to be turned away by this slip of a girl! He ran his hand through his dirty blonde hair and again tried to bypass the girl, furiously batting away the dirt and grass his previously immaculate formal clothing collected upon contact with the ground -

He landed on his ass again, straight back where he had been only moments prior.

“I said, _absolutely not_!” Tiny Beatrice von Kircheisen yelled again, the voice gaining a near shriek-like quality, looking none worse for wear with the exception of light perspiration on her brow, which she quickly wiped away. “If I said no, it’s pointless to even ask my father about it!”

“I will _not_ be speaking with an unruly girl about this matter -” Alphonse snarled, now growing angry, but the girl held out, pointing her blade at his throat, as if daring him to move and hurt himself upon the cold steel, no matter how dulled it was.

“You will not speak with a girl about a marriage you’ll supposedly have with her? What kind of a fool you are, Alphonse von Schegell?! Do you honestly think your money is enough to make me fall for you and your idiocy?”

“Beatrice, _schatzi_ ,” came a tired voice from behind the arguing pair, and Sigmund von Kircheisen appeared at his daughter’s shoulder. “Do cut the poor boy some slack.”

“ _Vati_ ,” Beatrice turned around, transforming from a tiny, deadly valkyrie into an adorable nine-year-old girl in an instant as she glomped her father, carefully holding the blade of the training sword away from her father’s body and grinning broadly.

It was easy to see why she had been so popular among the boys, and why she’d be asked about marriage so early: with her slender build, silky blonde hair, rosy cheeks, honest smile and azure blue eyes, she looked the image of a perfect Aryan woman. Once you added in her family with the long tradition of knighthood and impeccable record with the local community, on paper, Beatrice Waltrud von Kircheisen was a perfect match for any man ambitious enough to rise through ranks or for an old-family heir in need of a respectable marriage to pick her as a good wife when she grew up.

Unfortunately, what paper couldn’t tell you about Kircheisen heiress, was her utter disregard for the social maneuvering, and distaste of the notion of marriage in general. Had she been of that mind, she could’ve had played coy and let all those Nazi party sympathizers and sycophants fight out over her, sitting back and enjoying the show as it unfolded and only picking one after the weak ones bowed out. To their luck – and also bad luck – Beatrice was far more of a knight than a damsel in distress; she had no issue in putting her would-be courters on their asses before they even managed to get an audience with her father and mother, thereby humiliating them and showing them they were simply not worthy of her.

It didn’t help that most of said courters held back on her, likely trying not to ‘harm’ her – it made Beatrice want to puke. She was no damsel, _Gott im Himmel_! Why had it been so difficult to make those idiots understand she was not a trophy wife to be wined and dined – she needed a challenge, respect, someone who’d acknowledge her as equal and not take any of her dramatic tendencies.

So far, she hadn’t found a single person – well, maybe Alfred, but even he was far too hesitant to call her out – that fit the bill, and Beatrice was starting to despair. She was this harsh exactly because she didn’t want to marry just anyone – at her core she was very romantic, she wanted her perfect match, and, well…

So far, everyone was failing miserably.

“ _Schatzi,_ why do you have to terrorize every single boy that comes through these gates?” Sigmund asked with a good-natured, if slightly exasperated chuckle, and untangled himself from his daughter to help poor Alphonse up. “My daughter has rather high expectations of her suitors, so you’ll have to forgive her ways of testing them.”

Beatrice did not hear Alphonse’s reply to that, nor did she need to; her father had made a discreet sign with his hand outside the boy’s sight, one that told Beatrice that a) he wanted to talk to the boy privately and b) he had not approved of him either. Stifling a giggle, Beatrice rushed off to the training grounds, where Alfred was in the full swing of his warm-up exercises, already sweating like a pig but hands steady and cuttingly precise in their movements.

“Chased off yet another one of your numerous suitors, Bea?” Alfred grinned at her, removing his eyes from the blade but keeping the form impeccable as he froze in place, not daring to move around and not look at the blade lest he lose control and impale himself.

“Of course,” Beatrice sniffed haughtily, settling herself into the same set of warm-ups, focusing on her breathing and releasing all of her frustration and anger into the movement. “I told you a million times Al, I have no use of a man who will not let me be who I’m meant to be, and trophy wife isn’t one of those things.”

“Yes, yes,” the boy rolled his eyes and returned to his own set. “All that talk about finding your perfect match, your soulmate, someone who’ll be able to understand you… don’t you think you’re setting the bar way too high this early on?”

“If I don’t set it right now, I’ll never find the best match possible,” Beatrice dismissed the notion. “I know I’m asking for a lot, but if he’s not even acceptable according to those standards, is it the problem of the standards or of the man?”

“Hmm, that’s a good question,” Alfred hummed, finishing the set and stepping back to watch his friend go through them at lightning fast pace. “Depends on what you deem as ‘acceptable’.”

“I suppose…” Beatrice panted slightly as she spoke, but did not slow down, determined to get through those warm-ups as fast as she could while still not skimping on the preparation. “He needs to be able to sit back and listen to me when I want to have a serious talk, and actually think about my words, that’s an absolute minimum. He also needs to be kind to other women – if I’m his only exception, how long will it be till I stop being that exception?”

Alfred snorted.

“Is that not one of the most common tropes in those trashy romance books you read at night, even though your parents forbade you to?”

“It’s unrealistic!” Beatrice huffed, spinning on her foot and making a wide slash to finish the set. “I mean, didn’t they say the same for that drunk who married the seamstress in the village? He was all nice to her at first, but after a while, he started treating her just as bad as he treated other women around him!”

Alfred conceded with a nod, but smiled impishly at her.

“I didn’t expect that sort of rationality from you, Bea – guess you do have a brain under that blond rat’s nest you call hair.”

“You take that back, Mister _my-nose-is-always-crooked_!” Beatrice shrieked and chased after the laughing boy, sword out and ready to spar.

* * *

_Beatrice, age 14, 1937_

When she first met Eleonore von Wittenburg, Beatrice’s heart skipped a beat, and she mentally declared herself in love with the older woman.

The two met on one of many, many camping trips _Bundes_ _Deutsche Madchen_ , counterpart to _Hitlerjungend,_ organized between its sister branches – the head branch of state of Baden-Wuttenberg held the state-wide meeting deep in the Schwarzwald Forest, and Eleonore attended as the former member and the alumni, helping organize things and answering any and all questions the curious girls could have from her.

Beatrice instantly recognized the surname when the alumni names were read out – Wittenburgs had always been close allies of Kircheisens, and the two knightly houses rarely disagreed on anything of major importance. Squabbled they certainly did – in fact, Beatrice’s father Sigmund was not a huge fan of the current patriarch’s younger brother and his ‘hoodlum ways’, as he called it, and the two often argued about it in the state meetings – but when push came to shove, the two showed a united front.

That fact alone already placed her higher in Beatrice’s eyes than any other alumni they had encountered that day, but the fact she was the only alumni who had not yet married, and in fact bluntly and rather crassly replied about not marrying any time soon when one of the other alumni tried to embarrass her in front of the younger girls by asking her of her marriage offers, well.

Beatrice was definitely in love.

“Lady von Wittenburg! Lady von Wittenburg!” she panted, running after the woman out of the dining hall. Most of the girls and the older women were still eating, but Beatrice had never been the one to needlessly extend her time at the dining time if there was no intelligent or interesting conversation to be had, and apparently Lady von Wittenburg was the same.

“What do you want, girl?” The gorgeous woman sniffed, but obliged Beatrice by stopping and turning around to answer her. “I hope you’re not here to waste my time.”

“O-of course not, Lady von Wittenburg!” Beatrice stuttered a little over her words, and she spotted the corner of the other woman’s mouth twitch, setting her cheeks on fire. Oh, why couldn’t she act at least a little bit cooler in front of her senior? Why could she not be cool and collected, like she was with all of her hapless suitors? “I-I merely wanted to introduce myself and thank you for coming here and being the role model for all of us!”

Eleonore raised her eyebrow.

“You consider me a role model?”

“Of course, of course!” Beatrice hopped up and down in place, having difficulty placating her excitement. “I mean, some girls want to marry and have kids, but not everyone wants that! Some of us want to do something meaningful – be useful in a more direct way, like… like being soldiers and knights, and – and -”

“Knights? A puppy like you?” Eleonore’s eyebrows both rose up sky-high, and Beatrice’s ears burned at the pet name as she held the urge to squeal. The older woman had to like her, right? She wouldn’t called her that otherwise, right? “Do not overreach yourself.”

“I’m not overreaching – I will be a knight!” Beatrice crossed her arms. “I swore it as the Kircheisen daughter when I was but six years old, and I’m not about to break my oaths!”

Eleonore tilted her head to the side, before small smirk appeared on her face.

“Kircheisen, you said? That little brat that keeps on rejecting every single boy in Germany that comes to her family in hopes of good marriage?”

Beatrice’s heart fluttered – Eleonore knew of her? - and she nodded enthusiastically, ignoring the whole ‘brat’ thing.

“I’m no one’s trophy wife, and I’m not going to marry until I find someone who feels right to me,” Beatrice made a declaration for the first time out in the open, giddiness rising up. Sure she’d sworn the same thing on many occasions, but those were private, behind the closed doors of her bedroom and dining room of her parents’ house, when only those loyal to the family and part of it could hear her. “I’m a knight first, and knight’s first duty is to help their comrades in battle!”

Eleonore’s small smirk was slowly growing as Beatrice spoke of her convictions, until her whole face was swallowed by that grin. Beatrice swore right there and then – she would stick to this woman, and make her smile like this all the time, because…

Smirks and smiles held but a candle to the true burning radiance that was Eleonore’s wide, toothy grin, and Beatrice wanted to find all the ways to coax it out.

“And here I thought this would be yet another alumni meeting I’d have to make decent excuses to get out of early. Say, do you have your sword here?”

“I do! But…” Beatrice hung her head, not feeling a lick bit excited about it. She had begged and begged her father to take _Thrud Walkure_ , their family’s signature blade and the only blade in the armory that had the history of being wielded by women, onto his trip, but Sigmund had uncharacteristically put his foot down firmly and forbade her from taking it along, his wife Amalia nodding along.

 _You’re going on a camping trip, not a hunting one,_ Beatrice could still hear her mother’s gentle scolding as she helped her pack her things and watched her wrap one of the plain swords that they agreed upon as a compromise. _Please, try to connect with other girls and enjoy more feminine side of things. We were not meant for war, us women – only maidens are, and making such a choice so early… I can’t allow it for you, Beatrice. Not yet._

“But?”

“ _Vati_ and _Mutti_ forbade me from bringing my true blade with me – I’m not as good with the replacement blade, the weight is all wrong,” Beatrice pouted sullenly. “I’m just going to make a fool of myself in front of Lady von Wittenburg if I use it.”

And the last thing she wanted right now was to make a fool of herself and make her idol think less of her.

“Heh, it takes some guts to say that, you little fool of a girl,” Eleonore was still grinning widely, and Beatrice soaked it all up, feeling just like a puppy the older woman had accused of being not minutes ago. “Don’t worry, I don’t really expect anything out of the spar – I just want to see what level you’re at, and do you have what it takes to be a true knight. Go and fetch it – the gym is empty, we can have the bout peacefully there.”

“ _Jawohl_ – I won’t let you down!” Beatrice promised and rushed off to the dorms to grab the plain sword, also taking a moment to change – she was in an evening dress, and while it was certainly pretty, she was not about to ruin it with sweat and dust she was definitely doing to have all over her at the end of this bout.

The gym was empty, just like Eleonore promised, and the woman was nowhere to be found; Beatrice took a moment to properly fix her hair so it wouldn’t get in the way, unwrapped the sword, inspected it just in case (the habit she could never ditch, despite the armory master’s reassurances that all blades were kept in tip-top shape), and settled into a basic stance for some warm-ups and to get more used to the blade.

Midway through, Eleonore joined her as well, a challenging smirk on her face as she went through her own motions, her sword obviously her true one. Beatrice couldn’t help but feel a little green with envy – the other was just so graceful, and not for the first time she cursed her own age and inexperience and wished for the time to hurry up. She wanted to also do those things so gracefully!

“Practicing basic stances before a bout? Do you not think they’d limit you too much?” Eleonore asked idly after they finished the warm-up and settled across each other, about four meters of distance between them.

“Rushing in needlessly won’t make me a victor, but a fool that’ll get impaled sooner rather than later,” Beatrice paraphrased one of her father’s favorite sayings, grinning as her heart sped up, adrenaline flooding her veins. “We’re not here for a death match – why not properly warm up?”

“Warm ups?” There was a note of respect and surprise in Eleonore’s voice, and Beatrice glowed at the implied praise. “Very well. You might just not be all hot air, brat. _En garde!_ ”

“ _Jawohl_!” Beatrice answered the battle cry with her own, and the two – one tall, fully grown woman in her early twenties, the other a tiny slip of a teen girl – fell upon each other, eyes blazing in determination to beat the other.

* * *

_Beatrice, age 19, 1942_

It had been over five years since the two had met properly, and not a day had passed by when Beatrice had not admired her senior – and now her superior in the ranks of Waffen-SS – and fought her hardest to be acknowledged by her as something more than just a girl with admirable skill in swordplay who followed the older woman around like a lost puppy. She’d always tried her hardest – making a fool of herself in front of Eleonore to get that wide grin out of her and cheer her up, sparring with her when she was so tightly wound she threatened to burn the world and they couldn’t afford it to happen, following her around and taking care of her whenever she forgot to do so (which happened distressingly often).

And yet… Eleonore didn’t love her, not the way Beatrice wanted her to.

To be fair, though, Beatrice didn’t expect her superior to ever harbor the type of feelings Beatrice did – Eleonore made it terrifyingly clear on many occasions she was not looking for love or marriage, and Beatrice wholeheartedly supported her choice – but she wanted to be noticed as important to Eleonore. She wanted to be the most important person in Eleonore’s life, even for a tiny moment; for you see, if that ever happened, it would the clearest acknowledgment Eleonore considered Beatrice her equal, someone capable of being on their own and just as a sycophant and leech.

It may have been a bit unfair, but that was how it was: Beatrice could never truly escape the derisive glances and whispered insults lobbed at her that accused her of being a suck-up, riding Eleonore’s coattails and using their friendship and family connections to force Eleonore to continue promoting her alongside herself; not in Berlin and certainly not in the barracks. She would always have the mark of being the youngest officer ever to promoted to the rank of Lieutenant, and the only woman to do so, _and_ the only person both Eleonore and Lord Heydrich had ever nominated for promotion. Had Elenore possessed any degree of tolerance for gossiping in her ranks, Beatrice was sure the barracks would be muttering of her buying her promotion through sucking up to Eleonore _and_ sleeping with Lord Heydrich, completely ignoring the fact she earned her promotions through blood, sweat and tears, pouring over the plans Eleonore made to catch any mistakes and personally going to the front lines to make sure the losses would be minimal.

It may have seemed insignificant, such a thing, but it took a heavy mental toll on Beatrice… and Ahnenerbe she commanded was not helping matters.

 _Thrud Walkure_ was a fairly fickle and unique thing, even as far as most Ahnenerbe were concerned: unlike many of the other relics which only threatened to consume the wielder’s soul if they didn’t have other souls to feed on (with the exception of cursed Wewelsburg Longinus), _Walkure_ constantly tested Beatrice and threatened to go off rails if she wasn’t being the brightest lightning she could be. A weapon that allegedly belonged to Thrud, one of Thor’s daughters, it had no mercy or sympathy for wavering convictions – Beatrice had struggled far more than any other Longinus Dreizehn Orden member in fully mastering it for that reason, which less kind members never failed to mock her and Eleonore scold her for.

Beatrice wished so many times she could explain how _Walkure_ behaved to Eleonore – she could not bear the look of disappointment on her face – but she couldn’t, not without sounding a whiny brat in her own ears, and Eleonore had no patience for whining.

And now… with the rumors of Lord Heydrich’s death being disproved, Beatrice was forced to face a terrifying realization that she may never be acknowledged as an equal, or worthy of attention. After all, the only person in Eleonore’s eyes for so long had been the Golden Beast himself… and why kind of chance did tiny, imperfect, clumsy little Beatrice had against the man who literally radiated golden light, blinding everyone and everything?

“Love is such an unkind thing on one’s heart, particularly when it’s unrequited, is it not, Valkyria?”

Beatrice startled out of her depressed musings at the far too familiar and hated voice of an equally hateful man. Vice Commander of the Obsidian Round Table Karl Krafft – or, well, Mercurius – sat down next to her on a bench outside the tents, observing her with a lilting grin and unfocused eyes. Beatrice instantly slammed up her mental shields as Rusalka had taught her once and scooted away from the man – she didn’t want to spend any more time than necessary near the man.

“Ayaya, such mistrust,” Mercurius tilted his head, the lilting, enigmatic smile souring into a small frown, and Beatrice blinked. She had never seen him with a serious expression on his face: he had always been mildly amused at everything, never serious like this. “There’s hardly any need for such thing. I do have some experience with the very same feelings going through your soul right now after all, Valkyria.”

“Don’t call me that,” Beatrice complained half-heartedly, aware he was not going to stop either way, but it felt good to voice her displeasure with the title. She had never felt less like a valkyrie, the maiden of the battlefield, than right now, when all her hopes and dreams had been dashed ad she left floundering, her love and heartbreak the only steady things she could grab onto. “What would a man like you even know of the feelings I have?”

“Ah, again with the mistrust,” Mercurius smiled again, but it strangely still lacked the mocking undertone he normally wore around himself like a cloak and used it carelessly as a weapon against everyone except Lord Heydrich. “Despite my humble appearance, my dear Valkyria, I do have capacity to love, and my heart has long since been given away to a woman I could never hope to have.”

That did sound distressingly like Beatrice’s own situation.

“Loving someone who’ll never love you back, loving someone you could never have… the difference is so irrelevant, it may as well be ignored,” Mercurius continued, and Beatrice hung onto her every word despite herself. “Of course, the humanity would tell you the easiest way to deal with it is to let go, accept the heartbreak and move on, because if they cannot see in that light they’re not worth of your love – ridiculous notion, in my opinion.”

There, he and she agreed completely – she would never let go of this love, even if Eleonore directly tramped all over it and discarded it as needless.

“Is it not the highest proof of love to not need the reciprocation – only acknowledgment that it is not meaningless?” Mercurius grinned wryly, and somehow more honestly than before. “Ah, there is not a thing I would not do for my goddess if she but asked – others might call me a fool for that, since I could never have her, but I do not mind. Causing her joy and her seeing it as my work is the only payment I require, truly.”

“What of jealousy, then? It’s as natural as love is,” Beatrice felt the need to point out, still reeling a bit. Seeing this decidedly human side of the mercurial magician of the Table messed with her head, and she couldn’t hate in quite the same way as she did before. “There’s not a single person in the world who doesn’t covet something, be it an emotion, a thing or a person. How do you reconcile such a thing with selfless love?”

“What a dilemma indeed,” Mercurius murmured, looking deep in thought, and gave her no answer as he fizzled out of the existence, allowing her to return to the tent and to her bright-eye commander, who was still riding the high of being visited by the Gold personally to dispel her doubts about his demise.

In that moment, watching Eleonore von Wittenburg as she coordinated the supply chain with cheerful disposition while still being heavily bandaged and medicated in her bed, Beatrice doubled down on her sincerest wish – she would do anything and everything to make herself shine brighter than the all-encompassing gold of Reinhard Heydrich even for the briefest moment, so that Eleonore would look at her with that same adoration she held for Lord Heydrich.

It may have sounded like a futile hope, but everything she did in the past three years was borderline insane and completely impossible to normal people; she just had reach out towards the impossible again and make it possible.

After all, she was the embodiment of the guiding light – the lightning that split the sky. She was white, not gold – she could and would shine brighter, even if it killed her.

* * *

_Omake: Eleonore, age 92 (28), 2006_

The glass of fine wine she had been enjoying slipped out of her fingers and crashed on the golden floor, spilling dark red liquid everywhere, but Eleonore could not care less about it. She gaped at the expressionless figure of her Lord, who had brought the news of the outside world for the first time in over sixty years

“New… member?”

“Indeed,” Reinhard nodded, his golden mane swaying in the nonexistent wind as he held the unconscious golden-haired girl in a tattered dress in his arms. “Leonhart August. It seems my – our – Valkyria had fallen on Shambhala’s first Swastika eleven years ago due to a foolish attempt of one of our enemies to break the ritual, and the girl stepped up to close the gap.”

Beatrice… died? She died before Eleonore could come and fetch her to her side?

“At least she had the decency to die in Shambhala’s Swastika, that little fool,” Eleonore forced the words through her numb lips, not daring to reveal just how shaken she was by the revelation. “She will be there for the Transmutation, if nothing else.”

No replacement would ever be good enough for Eleonore; no, no one could replace Beatrice in Eleonore’s mind. No one’s light could measure to the pure, blinding lightning Beatrice so skillfully commanded and became one with – her light was the only one Eleonore found bright enough to consider worthy of her hellishly hot fires in their group, apart from Lord Heydrich himself. In fact, she might just kill the replacement to hasten her resurrection – nay, she’d kill them all, with the exception of Zarathustra and Sonnenkind, since they were still needed. They should’ve been more aware – they all knew what kind of woman Beatrice was, how rash and reckless on the battlefield, how eager to light other people’s way to victory and impress Eleonore, and they still let her die.

“That is quite a fortunate turn of event for us,” Reinhard nodded with a soft hum, cradling the girl in his arms with surprising care – the girl who, if stripped of her tattered dress and given military fatigues, could easily be mistaken for younger Beatrice from distance. Eleonore gulped and shook that thought away – it was not the time to reminisce. “I do understand Kristoff’s desire to fill in the gap and not let the seat remain empty in case something happened to the ritual, but I doubt he had done such a thing with pure intentions.”

“Ho?” Eleonore’s shock quickly transformed into predatory rage at the mention of the traitorous bastard. She’d always had her suspicions he’d try and mess up the ritual to prevent Lord Heydrich from taking his body back, but out of respect to her superior she’d never mentioned it – after all, he’d tell her if something had happened.

“Indeed,” Reinhard nodded. “I’d like you to open the fifth Swastika for me, Samiel, if only to prevent unnecessary complications from his possible meddling. Besides…”

Here, the golden King of the Dead closed his eyes and bowed his head.

“Fifth is not far from the first, and from what I understand, the funerary rites for the heroic fallen had never been performed.”

First was where Beatrice had fallen. Eleonore nodded sharply, understanding the underlying message – the moment she had the free passage to and from Shambhala, she had her lord’s permission to go and mourn her dearest comrade in privacy, her little fool of a girl Eleonore couldn’t help but want close to her, before she dragged her by the ear out of Gladsheimr at the end of it all and reviving her.

She could not quite explain to herself exactly _why_ she wanted Beatrice at her side. It couldn’t have been the familiarity or camaraderie – she wanted nothing to do with Brenner after all, and with the exception of Machina and maybe Sonnenkind the rest of the Obsidian Round Table Knights could burn in hell for all she cared. And yet, she always wanted her little fool with her, for Beatrice to sit at her side and enjoy the view of perfect, eternal golden Valhalla as one of its ultimate champions, from the lofty perch near Lord Heydrich’s throne.

Eleonore had no illusions Beatrice would be particularly pleased at first with that role; she would not be her Valkyria, the bright maiden of the battlefield, if she just accepted her seat in Valhalla. No, she’d struggle with accepting it, fight it, recklessly throw herself into every battle, looking for a hero that would be strong enough to defeat her, only to ultimately fail; she was the collector of the heroic dead, the one who cherry-picked which souls she’d accept under her wing, the one who always sniffed at and looked down on gluttons like Schreiber and Bey who fed indiscriminately and chose only the ones she could feel were good enough for Valhalla – there was no hero that could defeat her, for she was the ultimate hero.

You had to be a villain, a devil incarnate to defeat someone of her caliber, and Eleonore would gladly accept that title to keep her at her side and her light in her line of sight for all eternity. It simply wouldn't be the same without her and her constant yapping, after all.


End file.
